Here's Hoping

For those who wake up on New Year’s day hoping the alarm clock reads Jan 1, 2008 – desperate in the hope the past 12 months have been a nightmare that never happened, keep reading.

We spend a great deal of time gathering data and making sense of it – sometimes this information is serious and sometimes it’s not.

So, if you’re requiring of some light hearted humour to take out the year that we wish hadn’t happened then here it is.

The credit crunch has spun off a whole new glossary of terms.

An example of which were included in a presentation made to the Irish Stock Exchange;

• Bull Market – A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.
• Market Correction – The day after you buy stocks.
• Bear Market – When you are able to sleep like a baby. Waking up every hour crying.
• Economist – Someone who talks in somebody else’s sleep
• Broker – Poorer than you were last year.
• Institutional Investor – An investor from the past 12 months who’s now committed.
• Profit – Religious guy who has a direct line to God.
• Credit Crunch – Lending market disruption – Not a new cereal from Kellogg’s.
• New Financial Disclosure – Past performance is not a useful guide to the future. Unit prices may fall as well as plummet.

We have also discovered some new research into the economics of songs and of course singers:

Sadly, we can now reveal what happens when economists start to examine the hidden meanings of music?

The following charts and graphics take some commonly known songs and turn them into that great form of communication: powerpoint.

Anyhow, in the past year we conducted more than 500 online surveys answered by more than 50,000 Australians, we conducted approximately 1,000 mystery shopping events across the financial services industry, performed hundreds of face-to-face interviews, focus groups and telephone surveys.

We have an extra ordinary amount of data, some of it very serious and some of it well, not that serious.

In the spirit of Christmas and the fact that the burningpants brand is making a come back, we have decided to share some of the sillier things that we have discovered.

Merry Christmas!

Rick Astley would never

Things Meat Loaf would do for love